Three Rounds To Go

By Britni Patterson

A trans-gender woman is brutally murdered for love, the body of a forensics student is planted on the body farm, and an unforgettable dinner with murder for dessert! Rosa Parks, Britni Patterson's newest detective makes her debut in three short stories, one of which was a finalist for the Derringer 2015 Best Short Story, and two exclusive stories for this collection!

The Bad Son - Rosa's hired to find and follow a transgender woman, but her target gets murdered before Rosa can deliver the goods. This story was a Derringer Finalist for Best Short Story in 2015.

Don't Call Me Patsy - Rosa finds herself on a body farm with an out-of-touch professor determined to prove his chops to a smart-ass grad student, but instead she trips over a body that isn't supposed to be there.

Peaches - Rosa and her on-again off-again sheet-buddy Shouft go out for an unforgettable dinner at the hottest restaurant in town, where the food is magic and the atmosphere is undeniable, but murder and love are both on the menu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Britni Patterson
• Release date: Sep 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9780990809562

Britni Patterson

Britni Patterson was born and raised in Del Rio, Texas, a small border town in the geographic "armpit" of Texas. She attended the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and NC State University for chemical engineering, but she quickly realized that while she loved it when things went boom, engineering hates booms, and therefore she wasn't meant to be an engineer. Growing up with a West Texas family prone to "swappin' yarns" that have just enough truth to be possible gave her a love of telling stories, and the ability to laugh at anything. Through a series of hysterically bad decisions that somehow ended for the best, Britni now lives in North Carolina, married to a paramedic who keeps ruining her best murder ideas with "truth", two adorable children, and a healthy respect for serendipity's evil twin. She is also a member of the Society of Creative Anachronism, where she is known as Mistress Livia Zanna, Order of the Laurel for calligraphy & illumination, is a concert pianist, an avid reader, and tries to raise orchids with dubious success.

Book preview

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Three Rounds

To Go

Three Rounds To Go

Britni Patterson

A Rosa Parks Short Story collection

© 2015 Britni Patterson

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-0-9908095-6-2

Maplebonnet Publishing, 4812 Brentwood Rd, Durham 27713

Cover and Interior Layout:

Jennifer Soucy - www.the-brand-box.com

Author Photo:

Charlotte Hayes - www.shutterbugscreations.com

DEDICATION

In homage to the real Rosa Parks, and the stubborn determination not to move one inch farther that drew a line in history.

THE BAD SON

It had been a bad night. Not only had I blown my cover to the person I’d been tailing for a week, but then I lost her immediately afterwards. I’d made the rookie mistake every private detective can fall into and gotten too interested in my target.

I was having my usual breakfast of Mini-Wheats, trying to decide whether to quit the case or hope for the best, when the morning news reporter’s deliberately regretful-yet-professional tones caught my ear. The top story of the morning was a brutal homicide of a Jane Doe who had been beaten to a pulp in front of the entrance to Umstead State Park off Harrison Avenue. The police were requesting help identifying her. I gave the sketch a look out of habit and dropped my cereal bowl. My former person of interest, Min-jun Kim, had been murdered.

Three hours later I was sitting across from Homicide Detective Abram Shouft, a giant man of mixed Cherokee and German heritage with an impressive nicotine addiction and a lousy temper. His tiny office was dangerously full of files, empty to-go cups from Dunkin Donuts, and two hundred and fifty pounds of nicely-distributed muscle crammed into a suit. Most men look good in a suit, but Shouft would have been better displayed wearing nothing but a loincloth and the blood of his enemies. His face is a little too savage in its lines to wear civilization well. The visitor’s chair in his office was one object too many. I’m only 5’4", but my knees were starting to ache from pressing against the desk.

Shouft is never happy to see me in a professional capacity. In his opinion, good private detectives should join the police force, the bad ones should be shot, and neither kind should ever be involved in his cases. I’m one of the best, so he’d like to resent me on principle. But when I have to deal with the police, I go through Shouft, because at least he doesn’t give a shit that I’m female, Korean-American, and have a worse temper than he does. There’s also the fact that he’d be perfectly happy to see me in a personal capacity, if our professional ethics and self-preservation instincts could be surgically removed.

Transgender? Shouft said for the third time. So what do you say, he or she?

She. I don’t know what was still in her pants, but she passed from six inches.

OK. One more time, he said.

I groaned. He ignored me. So you were hired to follow the deceased, by a woman claiming to be the mother of the victim, because the victim had left home on bad terms and the mother wanted to be sure the vic was all right?

I verified her identity before I took the job.

Shouft shifted in his chair. By her, you mean the mother, right?

Yeah. Mrs. Kim. Somewhere in her late fifties, built small and sturdy, with gray hair wound tightly in a bun. Small pudgy hands clenched tightly on her purse, trouble lines carved between her eyes and doll-size mouth pinched shut. Wearing black because her husband had died. Holding a check from the insurance company to prove she could pay me.

And her son … daughter. Whatever. You followed her for a week, and then decided to approach her last night. Shitty surveillance tactic, Parks.

I thought there was a chance for reconciliation.

"You stuck your nose where it